Result

I would love to tell you all that I lost some weight, but it seems that my hardly used digital scales have decided that they don't need to work any more.....PoS newfangled #!!&!

I should have got a mechanical one, my mechanical one lasted years......

Just proves the older stuff is better.....

End...

Today is the final day, I wish I could have been more creative but, well I have had a sickly child these last couple of days and, of course, I did very little shopping.  One thing I rather missed was the convenience of all the oven ready food I still have in the freezer, this week I either had to work for it OR go hungry, so I went hungry far more than I would normally have. 

But today I was not going hungry because I had plenty of left overs but with a sick child, a headache and not much else available, today would have been a very miserable day, so thank goodness for that large dish full of hot pot, it has kept me warm and comforted through three mealtimes.
As usual, I slept through breakfast.

Lunch

Leftover Lancashire hot pot and toast

Dinner

Leftover Lancashire Hotpot and

Savoury Scones

4oz flour
4oz medium oatmeal (omitted, used self raising flour instead)
1tsp Baking powder (omitted due to using self raising flour)
1/2 tsp salt
2oz shredded cheese (omitted)
1oz fat (used butter)
Milk

Mix dry ingredients, rub in fat and then add enough milk to make a really soft dough, fold out onto floured surface and flatten out, shape into triangles and bake in moderate oven for 15 minutes or until brown.

 Taste

These were nice and very appropriate for a stew type of dish.  I would have preferred to have some cheese of course and some dried herbs would have been really nice in them also but these were nice and tasty without.

No cheese left...

Snack

1 Apple

Monday, the calm before the Storm

 I call today the calm because everything opens up again tomorrow, life is back to normal after the holidays...bah!

Yummy

I was up half the night dealing with a crotchety baby so awoke at a ridiculous hour, missed breakfast entirely again and thought I may as well wait until lunch, however I was NOT in the mood for cooking so thank goodness for this recipe:

Lunch

Quick Welsh Rarebit

2 slices bread (mine was homemade bread so thick slices)
1 tsp Margarine (omitted)
1 tsp Chutney or Yeast Extract (Marmite)
2tbs Grated Cheese

Toast bread, spread with Margarine and Marmite/chutney
Add cheese and put back under grill until cheese has melted, serve with Salad.

Taste

Well what can I say really, it is cheese on toast, carbs + fat...what's not to like?  I think a side salad was a bit ambitious for January, I served mine with a nice heap of sauerkraut.

Fresh out of the oven

This spelt the end of the cheese by the way, so tomorrow will be entirely cheese free.

Dinner

Lancashire Hotpot

3/4lb of meat (used Leftover Tivall Slicing sausage from yesterday)
2 carrots
1 Onion or Leek
3lbs potato (I used three small potatoes and third of a swede)
1 dessertspoon of fat or dripping (omitted)
1/2 pt stock (I used about two)
1 dessertspoon of flour
salt and pepper to taste

(opt. I added a small cauliflower because it needed to be used and I used extra stock and added a 3rd cup (80grams) of barley to this pot)

(MP Classic recipe)
Add cut up and sliced meat and veg and half the potatoes and place in casserole dish, add fat and cover, bake for half an hour. Take out of oven, add stock, and the flour (mixed with some of the stock as a thickener) and the rest of the potatoes, salt and pepper and bake for a further 10 minutes without the lid until potatoes are brown (around 10 mins)

Natja's vegetarian version - place stock, onions, potatoes, carrots and cauliflower in casserole dish, add parboiled Swede if fancied) mix in barley and cook for 30 mins with lid on.

Take out and stir, add Tivall sausage cut into mouthsized chunks and flour thickener (you may need to use more flour than the classic recipe), stir and put back in oven without lid for another 10 minutes at least.

Finished dish

Serve with bread

Taste

This came out much better than I could have imagined, tasty and wholesome, just a lovely stew. I will admit for putting a bit of mixed herbs in mine.  It was heavy in sage which was lovely and really enhanced the flavour.
Truly a dish that never goes out of fashion.

Afters

Tinned fruit salad

Sunday - Sick Child

Further to my earlier post and quite obvious really, I  had porridge for breakfast.

My little baby is ill, we had a very difficult night and a very demanding day so I ate the rest of the biscuits for an afternoon tea and endevoured to make a Lancashire hot pot for dinner, did I get to do it?
Did I heck, I am typing with a baby on my lap at the moment, she doesn't want to be let down and so.....before I knew it, it was 7pm and I hadn't made a start on the hot pot, what is a Mother to do?

I tell you what she is to do, cheat....well sorta....

I had a pack of Tivall vegetarian slicing sausage

in the fridge, I was thinking I could use it as some sort of substitute sausage meat, than I thought i could use it in the hot pot but then, when looking for inspiration I came across Spam Hash on
 Carolyn Ekins exceptional 1940s Experiment blog. She lost 69lbs eating Wartime Rations for a year...blimey and I am daunted by a week!!  Good on her!

However, from my experience so far, if I lose any weight it will be because I skipped so many meals rather than the calorie content of them so far. 

Anyway back to the food, I used her recipe (which I won't replicate here because it is available via the link) and used about a third of the slicing sausage and it tasted fab, I will leave you to make up your mind if it looks Spam like enough but it sure tasted better than spam!!!!

Red onions as usual

Addendum

Breakfast crisis,  I used up all of my porridge....I have decided for the sake of getting into the spirit to not replace it and make do. 

Saturday at home

Brunch

Bread and butter
Knob of cheese
Pear

Dinner

Finishing off the last of the cabbage today by making what the English charmingly call 'Champ' of course the Irish have a much nicer name and call it Colcannon.

Champ

Mashed potato
Cabbage

Mix both together, easiest dish of the week 

Fried red onions

Finished dish, not pretty but tasty

Afters

Banana custard rolled oat chew

Made up oaty pudding

If you recall on the previous post that I was inspired by the oaty biscuit recipe from yesterday, I reused it for this made up pudding today.

4oz wholemeal flour
4oz rolled oats
Raisins
2oz brown sugar  Mix well and then rub in about 1oz of butter
Mix milk until it clumps together and then spread evenly on a greased dish and bake in moderate oven until brown.

Use it whilst warm to top Birds custard (I'm not cheating, it has no eggs) and sliced banana

Warning, this is a biscuit recipe, if you have any left overs, the rest will harden in the dish, save yourself some hassle and cut into slices and remove from dish to cool, the leftovers will make nice oaty biscuits for another time.

Friday - Peace

Yay!!!!  I got my new phone to work!  Normal pictures can resume


Breakfast

Porridge

Finally, today I discovered how bloomin HUGE the sugar ration is...blimey who would have thunk it guv?  But then I thought wait a sec, if I has in the habit of, several cups of tea a day, each having a teaspoon full of sugar, over the course of a week, than suddenly the ration doesn't look so huge.

But for my modern eyes, who drinks tea and coffee without, it looks very generous and gives me plenty of sugar for any baking....but only if I have enough fat for them!

Lunch

As has been the case this week I am missing the occassional meal because the days are so short and I have been waking up so late, so instead I had an early dinner.


Dinner

Yesterdays leftover piece of Woolton pie, more sauteed savoy cabbage, a little bread
and

Cheese beans

Finished plate, cheese beans on the right side of plate

 1/2lb dried beans soaked overnight ( I used cannalini but you can use almost any medium sized bean, needless to say, this day and age we know better than to boil beans in their soaking water but back then they treated beans like Vegetables and assumed you were keeping the goodness, now we know we are just getting rid of some nasty  oligosaccharides, so I am going to dispense with Ms. Patten's wisdom and say, throw out the soaking water and use fresh water to boil.) Boil until tender.

2oz grated cheese
1tbs Vinegar
1/2tsp mustard
1 -2 tbs mint and parsley chopped together (I used a small amount of dried herbs instead)
2tsp Worcester sauce (I have looked everywhere for Worcester sauce without anchovies, however I can't find any and so, in great Make Do tradition, I used a bit of garlic sauce instead)

Drain beans but keep a bit of bean water, add all ingredients (except herbs) to pot with the bit of bean water and stir until cheese has melted, add drained beans and toss, top with chopped herbs.

Taste

I realise that with using the garlic sauce instead of Worcester sauce the taste would probably be a lot different to what Ms Patten created, however that is not to say the taste was bad, on the contrary, they were very nice, the only problem I had is, I used much less than 1/2lb beans but followed the recipe otherwise, this meant my sauce was plentiful enough but I couldn't taste the cheese at all, could it have been the stronger taste of the garlic sauce?  Probably, but Worcester sauce has a strong taste too and I would fancy making the sauce again without the two ounce limit to see if it really made a difference.



Afters

Rolled oat Macaroons

Oatmeal biscuits, they did not spread as per the recipe, probably because of the less fat I used

3oz Margarine (replaced with a bit of oil)
2oz Sugar
1/2-1tsp almond essence (didn't have, omitted)
1tbs golden syrup (didn't have, replaced with honey)
4oz self raising flour
 4oz rolled oats
Milk to mix

Mix dry ingredients together, than margarine, syrup and essensce to make a crumble (oooh gives me ideas...) consistency.  Add enough milk for mixture to bind together, form balls and bake in moderate oven for 15-20 minutes.

Taste

Ok, I know there were a lot of replacements in this biscuit recipe, regardless they were lovely and I am sure would taste even better with the required about of fat and essence.

Drinks

A note about drinks,  I read this interesting historical tidbit on Wikipedia

During the Second World War, other fruits rich in vitamin C, like oranges (from Florida), became almost impossible to obtain in the United Kingdom, due to the U boat campaign. Blackcurrant cultivation was encouraged by the Government, and the yield of the nation's crop increased significantly. From 1942, almost the entire British blackcurrant crop was made into blackcurrant syrup (or cordial), almost all of it manufactured by Carters, and distributed to the nation's children for free without the Ribena brand name, giving rise to the lasting popularity of blackcurrant flavourings in Britain.

 Reason enough to keep on drinking my blackcurrant squash then!

Walking out as a wartime mum

Today I went out to the library and shopping with my sister, perfectly appropriate wartime activities and I stuck to my guns only eating the kind of food that would have been available/fashionable at the time, this meant at Lunch I said hello Cheese Ploughmans and goodbye Halloumi and falafal wraps.

I had a slice of naughty carrot cake and lashings of ginger beer.....

Shopping was an interesting experience in near period appropriate frustration as I couldn't find any dried egg or egg substitute anywhere....brought some dried herbs and mustard powder and my second pint of milk, I am painfully aware that there is only one more pint available after it, luckily I don't take milk or sugar in my tea.  Have used none of my sugar ration yet.


Dinner

The famous (infamous) Woolton Pie

Dice and cook about 1lb each of the following in salted water potato, swede, carrot, cauliflower (or whatever winter veg you have available) strain and keep back some of the vegetable water mix vegetable water with a bit of vegetable extract (I used stock) and add oatmeal (in true make do fashion I am using flour due to lack of oatmeal) to thicken. Pour gravy over vegetables in a casserole dish.
Top with mashed potato and bake until golden, serve with brown gravy.

I am serving mine with a side of sautéed savoy cabbage.

Happy New Year 1940!!!!

Welcome to my first (and possible only, who knows?) week of eating within British WW2 ration limitations, using recipes based mostly on 'We'll eat again"

My first job today was to weigh myself. The argument being, that you will actually be healthier by consuming proper food even if you use full fat than all the highly processed foods we normally eat today, including low fat, low calorie etc.

As usual I missed breakfast and aimed to have lunch ready around 1pm.

For the purposes of frugality to keep in the spirit, my savoury cooking fat will be  the left over oil in a jar of artichokes.. How is that for making do??

Normally I would aim for a soup and bread combo for lunch, but seeing as I haven't made any bread I had to sacrifice my one solitary egg to make some batter...yes, my first dish today was pancakes of all things...

Lunch

All purpose batter recipe

4oz plain flour
pinch of salt
1/2 pint of water and milk mixed
1 dried egg powder (I used 1 fresh egg)

Plain pancakes, can be served sweet also

Mix dry ingredients and then whisk in some of the milk, add egg (if using fresh) than add some more of the liquid until you have a smooth consistency, fry until golden.  Makes about four smaller sized pancakes.

To serve savoury pancakes serve with fried onions, cheese or fried vegetables.

Finished product

I used a small bit of my cheese ration, grating it between pancakes and then topped with two very small onions slices and fried in the same frying pan as there was plenty of fat left in it.


The pancakes are crepes really as plain flour is used, not self raising, but they had a nice taste, but I can't help but feel that it might be because I used a fresh egg instead of dried, if I recall correctly, dried egg leaves quite a bitter aftertaste, at least it used to.

Obviously having to ration my cheese I used a great deal less cheese than I normally would in a dish, however I found that I still liked it and could taste the cheese find (it does help that I buy mature or extra mature cheddar only).  The fried onions were delicious.

 By the way, anyone who is curious to see what one weeks worth of cheese ration looks like this is it

Dinner

Roasted butternut squash (italics means plain veg on side and not not  in book)
Potato salad
1 1/2 potatoes, chopped in smaller pieces and boiled in salted boiling water
1/2 pint milk (or milk and water)
1.5 oz flour
1 tbs vinegar
1tbs chopped parsley (I had none so I omitted it)
1tbs chopped mint
4oz dried cheese (omitted)
 salt and pepper

Mix small portion of milk with flour until it is the consistency of cream, set the rest of milk to boil, when it starts to boil add flour/milk mix.  Reduce heat and keep stirring until sauce thickens, add vinegar, herbs and salt and pepper, add boiled potatoes and then stir to coat them fully in sauce..

Recipe says to leave to get cold, I ate them hot however.

Taste

To be honest I found it a bit plain, you can't get over the fact that it is really a white sauce and not mayonnaise. The recipe does say you can add some mustard powder if available but of course, I do not have any available though I think it would have improved the dish considerably.
I was hesitant to  use any more of my precious cheese ration, I livened mine up by adding raw garlic and red onion but I know that is not to everyone;s taste.

No picture I am afraid, the only vinegar I have is balsamic so it looked like brown sludge  (yes, yes I know all the middle class problems jokes).